Beautiful
by UsuakariTOT
Summary: A question about life, existance, humanity. Mariku has wanted to ask him for so long, but how will Bakura respond? What does he see looking into the eyes of someone who has to fight just to be human?


**A/N-**Yet another oneshot to kill time while I try to get over writer's block with my chapter fic. It stars Yami Bakura and Yami Malik, and there's more to it than just sex. It came out a bit longer than I'd originally anticipated, but I put a great deal of effort into this, and I really hope you like it. 

**Beautiful **

* * *

"...m-more...nghhh...please!"

Two figures danced together beneath the sheets, tainting the air with feral moans and lustful sighs. Tan flesh parted to make room for that which was pale as cream. Hooded eyes burned deep into those of garnet, begging to be saved, begging to finally quell the substance of his soul. But each time the tombkeeper tried to ask he would lose his nerve and slink away, hiding behind a veil of golden bangs and ever rampant madness.

"...Ba...Bakura!"

The Thief grunted in approval. He loved it when Mariku begged, when his harsh, scraping voice would be twisted by passion, manipulated until it became something bright, something almost lovely.

"You want more? Well then... earn it!"

The tombkeeper responded by bucking upwards, hips clashing in time with each of Bakura's well-aimed thrusts.

One was cold, cold with frigid hatred that, given 5000 years to stew, had encased his heart in a tomb of ice. The other was hot, burning with rage and sadness and sometimes even fear. One moment frenzied like fire, the next low and ominous like an ember waiting to erupt. He could only be soothed by ice, and Bakura was more than willing to provide.

The Thief grinned darkly as he stared back into the depths of his lover's fathomless eyes. Only he could dominate that shadowed purple gaze, only he could call forth the shards of humanity that flickered deep, deep inside.

"Has anyone ever told you that you're beautiful?"

There it was, a new shiver of emotion surfacing from the mires of apathy. Bakura loved it. He would have said anything, anything at all, to glimpse the secrets hiding in the younger spirit's mind.

"You...you don't mean it...bastard..."

The white-tressed demon frowned and thrust in sharply, just hard enough to cross the fine line separating pleasure from pure agony. He laughed quietly as Mariku winced, his desolate voice resounding off the walls of their bedroom like the song of some imagined phantom.

"Don't be naughty, Marik-love. Why ever would I lie to you?"

The tombkeeper moaned softly as Bakura plunged into him again, this time gently. He didn't like being punished, but so long as the Thief King would return he could endure it. When under the ancient one's enchantment, Mariku felt alive, closer to human than he would ever truly be. Each time they met Bakura would beat down the fires of madness and anger inside him, and the Darkness would be allowed, if only for an instant, to grasp that which was normally beyond his comprehension.

"You lie...because it is your nature...because without the lie you would see the world...as it really is..."

"Hmm?" Bakura tumbled about in the flood of words, adoring how they bubbled up from Marik's throat like water from a broken fountain. "What do you mean?"

The Darkness didn't answer. Instead he mewled as the other's ever-pounding arousel caused crazy love shudders to froth about in his belly. How could he explain something that could not be put into words? It could only be shown, never defined.

However Mariku's ramblings were momentarily forgotten anyway. Bakura was close now. All pretense of selfcontrol had been ripped away by the burning between his legs, and the spirit moved in and out at a pace that was almost cruel. Leaning down low enough so the tip of his lover's shaft brushed against his abdomen, the tombrobber hit Mariku's sweet spot rough and hard and over and over and...

The tombkeeper's back curved like that of a cat as violent waves of euphoria rattled his body. His mind was an explosion of color, bright, vivid, so unlike the terrible darkness in which he was normally submersed. These moments were what Mariku lived for, the few fragile seconds in which his soul would be ripped from it's chains and be allowed to fly, crazy and wild and joyously free, across the winds of ecstasy before crashing down to be shackled once more.

He came so hard it hurt.

Bakura watched in rapt fascination as the Darkness' orgasm hit, as his head lolled back obscenely, and his lips parted in a melodious scream. This sound sent shudders up the robber's spine. It was so full of everything, pain, lust, contentment, hate. Emotions he had thought he knew fairly well, but then why did they haunt him so? The spirit's unanswered questions flickered uselessly in the back of his mind.

Bakura's releases were always quiet. Perhaps it was living a life of stealth that led him to this, but the Thief King found no reason to cry out his rapture into the night. Instead he gritted his teeth and kept it inside, pleasure echoing loudly through the corridors of his mind. Still, as he filled the younger's passage with his essence, a single word escaped Bakura's lips.

"...Mariku..."

They lay in a crumpled heap, each too exhausted to disentangle himself from the mass of trembling limbs and sweat-kissed hair. Bakura pulled himself out of Marik's now lax body and nestled comfortably on the other's now slightly sticky chest. He reveled in the musky scent of his lover's skin and snaked his arms around to Mariku's back to trace the scars that marred it. As he began to slip away into the deepest realms of dreams, Bakura's fingers came to rest upon the pair of wings etched into his shoulders.

"When you look into my eyes, what do you see?"

"Hmm..."

The Thief King was annoyed at being wakened, but Marik didn't have time to worry about that. He had finally done it, finally asked the question that had been tormenting his brain for months. He felt elated, giddy, and terrified all at once. He unwound the older spirit's arms from his waist and held his hands gently between his own.

"What do you see?"

Bakura rolled his eyes. Why did Mariku always have to act like such a child? With a tired grunt he shook off the remainder of his drowsiness and rose irritably into a sitting position. Placing a palm on either side of the tombkeeper's head, he peered down into his questioning gaze.

"What am I supposed to see, Marik?"

"I... I don't know." The Darkness' voice faltered. Bakura sounded angry. Perhaps he should have waited for a better time. "I just..."

"Shh..." The pale-haired yami's voice came out in a sudden hiss. There it was again. Something formerly unnoticed had flashed across those twin expanses of bruised violet. They were eyes never meant to express anything beyond hatred and pain, but never the less other emotions still struggled to live inside them. Somehow a part of Marik's mind or heart or whatever it was was strong enough to force things like joy and reason and maybe even love into existance. Normal people were born with the capacity for such feelings, and so they took them for granted. But Mariku cherished everything, even the sadness, even the shame, because he had to work for it. He literally had to force himself to be human.

"Bakura..."

Still staring intently into his eyes, the Thief King placed a finger softly on his lover's lips. He wondered how he did it. What gave the Darkness the demented kind of courage needed to break away from the miasma of his creation and risk everything to remake himself, and how did he know how to go about doing so when no one had ever shown him the way?

Simple. He didn't.

During Battle City Mariku had acted like a completely different person. Bakura had envied him then, thinking of the tombkeeper as the perfect form of destruction, insane but collected, knowing exactly what he was doing and where his ultimate goals resided. However he had been wrong. Mariku hadn't had a clue what he was doing back then, and he certainly didn't know now. He didn't have a gameplan. He didn't have a fucking thing. He simply took the plunge over and over again, subjecting himself and everything around him to all kinds of horrors in hope of one day finding his humanity.

But this didn't answer the tombrobber's first question. What drove Yami Malik? It wasn't anger. Anger was too rash. Nor was it hatred, for that was exactly what the Darkness was trying to escape. What was it then? Sadness? Fear? It was true that normal, unblemished emotions did not come naturally to Mariku, but there had to be something in his blueprints to spark desire for such things in the first place. '_Its in his eyes. The answer is in his eyes.'_ Leaning down, Bakura forced himself to look even deeper into his partner's gaze. It was there. He knew it was.

Mariku watched as the Thief King scrutinized him, despair eating away at the sinews of his heart. _'He doesn't see anything. Thats why he won't answer me. There's nothing there! I'm empty...'_

Bakura bit his lip as Marik's stoic expression slipped into one of desperation. He needed an answer. It was all that kept the Darkness from falling farther into insanity, the hope that one day he could exist as something more than hatred and rage incarnate, the hope that one day... that was it.

Hope.

The Thief King's breath hitched in his throat, and he broke into a trembling smile. Since his birth Mariku had tried to find a way to be accepted. At first he'd tried to plunge the world into Shadow, thinking that if everyone was like him he would no longer be alone, but that hadn't worked. The world was to resilliant to be conquered by a single man. However he hadn't given up hope. If Mariku couldn't change the world to fit his needs then he would just have to change himself. He would force himself to be something he wasn't because though he denied it, the spirit was tired of being alone. He wanted to feel warm and secure, to be loved, to love back. He wanted to be real. He deserved it, and even if it took every bit of sanity he had, even if he had to build his entire soul from scratch, Mariku would somehow learn to feel.

But the Darkness didn't get it. Everything he needed was already there. Hope. Hope was enough. By questioning his humanity, by longing for it Mariku had gained what he desired. He had been brave enough to hope, and in a cruel and loveless world sometimes hope was all that made you human.

"What do you see?"

Tenderly, Bakura wiped away the kohl that smudged his lover's cheeks. Marik was scared that he would say he saw nothing, say that his eyes were vacant and dead, but he no longer had to be afraid. The spirit of the Ring would put his terrors to rest.

"What do I see?"

A weak nod was all the distraught Darkness could manage.

Placing a loving kiss upon the younger's lips the Thief King came so close that his teeth actually brushed against the sensitive lobe of Mariku's ear.

"I see the world as it really is... and it is beautiful."

* * *

-TOT 


End file.
